Airports Dropping off after upgrade to 5.7

Question

Airports Dropping off after upgrade to 5.7

For the past three months, I did battle with several Airport Extreme Base Stations as they would randomly drop off. I thought it was possibly traffic based, something overloading the APs and causing them to go offline, only to be fixed by unplugging and plugging back in the AP.

Finally, I rolled the base station software back to 5.5.1. Since then I have had no dropped APs.

I heard grumblings about 5.6, but I had many issues with 5.7 (well, one BIG issue).

Just to let those of you know facing this issue that as long as you are using WEP, this is a very stable solution.

Dual G5 Xserve, 250GB HD x 2, 2 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on May 16, 2006 9:51 AM

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Answer 1

May 16, 2006 9:58 AM in response to James O'Hagan

James,
Is there no problem with the combination of the version of the Airport software, firmaware, and OSX version? Everything is as happy as a clam?
Thank you,
Gino

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Answer 2

May 16, 2006 11:08 AM in response to Gino La Pointe

Everything was updated to the fullest. We implemented a program called Read 180 that when run would just KILL the base stations. However since the rollback, no issues, yet.

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Answer 3

May 16, 2006 6:57 PM in response to James O'Hagan

James,
Did the base station die when the program initialized, when it did special I/O, or intensive file transfer? When it killed the base, did it cause the signal strength to drop to zero, did it mess up the configuration, or did the server connections just break? Were you able to zero in a specific operation, which when repeated, would produce the same effects upon the base station? Are they justs Macs on your network or do you have XP machines as well? How long have you been running the full program again, with the old version - it has repeated what previously affected the base station? Sorry for all the questions, that's just kind of the way that I think about these kinds of things. I am not an Airport Extreme expert like Duane, Frank, iFelix, & Donald - I have not written any low level source code for the AEBS (i.e. not a wireless developer). I was just suprised by your description of how an app killed the base, but only at a certain wireless software version would it work again - if thats true (and I have no reason to not believe you) then if you could isolate the special combo of wireless software version, hardware, app, & action - that (especially if it is reproducable) could be very informative for Apple (I think).
Thank you,
Gino

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Answer 4

May 17, 2006 4:02 PM in response to James O'Hagan

James,
There is another new thread, "File and Print Sharing over wireless", that has some apparent file transfer / network damage suspicions. It would be bad if something in one of the layers or headers is overflowing, or an object dropping out of scope and not properly taken care of, or who knows what.
Gino

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Answer 5

Ash_ZS

Level 1

10 points

May 18, 2006 8:26 AM in response to Gino La Pointe

I've had trouble with 5.6 and 5.7 (see post AirPort drops connection). Where can I find the flash file for v5.5.1?
Thanks

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Answer 6

May 18, 2006 11:54 AM in response to Ash_ZS

I've had trouble with 5.6 and 5.7 (see post AirPort
drops connection). Where can I find the flash file
for v5.5.1?

There was another post from last October, on the thread, "Airport Extreme Base Station regularly hangs -- have to disconnect power". Here is is a reply from Christopher Gough Palmer describing the link:

IT SEEMS TO WORK!
24 HOURS AND NO FALIURE... A RECORD INDEED.
Its not your sexy new OR old airport, its the bloody
Firmware.
Downgrade to 5.5.1, its really easy to install and
seems to work.

Find it here....

http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.c
om/Apple Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/Mac_OSX/
downloads/061-1579.20041220.FW55m/AirPortExtremeFW5.5.
1.dmg

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